Welcome to the Language and Society Centre

The Language and Society Centre is an active research centre within the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University. The centre is home to many research projects, but it also holds conferences, seminars, lectures, public talks and workshops. It has hosted many distinguished visiting academics and has produced a wide range of publications. The Centre also runs an annual roundtable series and has had continuous success in attracting external funding, including ARC Discovery and Linkage grants.

The colleagues participating in the Centre are members of several programs in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics. These include: Linguistics, English as an International Language, Chinese Studies, German Studies, Italian Studies, Japanese Studies, Korean Studies, Translation and Interpreting Studies, and Spanish and Latin American Studies. The Centre collaborates nationally and internationally with other universities. Within the University the Centre is involved in collaborative projects with the Faculty of Education and other sections of the University, including the Faculties of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.

The Centrewas established at Monash University in 1989 as part of the National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia, an Australian Research Council (ARC) and Commonwealth Government funded collaborative key centre.

Events

Kate Burridge, Farzad Sharifian, Keith Allan, Réka Benczes (2014-2016). Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant. Project title: The Cultural Model of Ageing: The Australian Conceptualisation of the Third Age.
Papers
Réka Benczes and Kate Burridge: ‘Current attitudes to ageing as reflected in the names of Australian aged care facilities’ http://users.monash.edu.au/~kallan/age/CurrentAttitudes.pdf
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Language and Society Centre (LASC)
6th Annual Roundtable
November 6-7, 2014
Call for Papers:
(Im)politeness and Language
The Language and Society Centre (LASC) is pleased to announce that its 6th Annual Roundtable will explore ‘(Im)politeness and language’.
More than 1000 papers, articles and books have dealt with politeness, most often with a focus on Brown & Levinson’s well-cited ‘face management Read more

Fourth Annual Roundtable of Language and Society Centre
Thursday 16, Friday 17, Feb, 2012
Call for papers:Teaching and Learning Languages for International/Intercultural Communication
Globalization continues to bring people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds together, to live and to work, at an unprecedented speed. This phenomenon had given rise to a significant increase in and a demand for the Read more

More Events

New Definitions of English Proficiency and Changing Pedagogical Priorities
Presenter: Professor Suresh Canagarajah, LASC Distinguished Visiting Professor
Debates about assessment of international English have revolved around two important questions: Whosenorms should we apply? How do we define proficiency in the English language? The answers to these questions have been dominated by positions belonging to two well-entrenched ideological camps that I Read more

Professor Farzad Sharifian2 June 2011
In this lecture, Professor Sharifian will present an overview of the emerging field of cultural linguistics.
Cultural linguistics is a branch of linguistics that explores the relationship between language, culture and conceptualisation by drawing on and expanding the theoretical advancements and analytical tools of several disciplines including cognitive linguistics and cognitive anthropology.
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17th and 18th February, 2011Japanese Study Centre (Building 54)Monash University, Clayton campus
Language learning in the “global economy”
Like any other phenomenon, language learning is influenced by major forces that accompany globalisation, in the widest possible sense of the word. These global forces are often explored in terms of their economic impacts, but the notion of “economy” Read more